1. Waiting for Pentecost
The major event of the early chapters of Acts took place on the Day of Pentecost, when the now-exalted Lord Jesus performed the last work of his saving career (until his coming again) and ‘poured out’ the Holy Spirit on his waiting people. His life, death, resurrection and ascension all culminated in this great gift, which the prophets had foretold and which would be recognized as the chief evidence that God’s kingdom had been inaugurated. For this conclusion of Christ’s work on earth was also a fresh beginning. Just as the Spirit came upon Jesus to equip him for his public ministry, so now the Spirit was to come upon his people to equip them for theirs. The Holy Spirit would not only apply to them the salvation which Jesus had achieved by his death and resurrection, but would compel them to proclaim throughout the world the good news of this salvation. Salvation is given to be shared.
Before the Day of Pentecost, however, there was to be a time of waiting, for forty days between the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus (1:3), and for ten more between Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus’ instructions were quite clear, and Luke repeats them for emphasis, first at the end of his Gospel and then at the beginning of Acts: ‘stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high’; ‘Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about’ (1:4). During the fifty-day waiting period, however, they were not inactive. On the contrary, Luke singles out for comment four important events. First, they received their commission (1:6–8). Second, they saw Christ go into heaven (1:9–12). Third, they persevered together in prayer, presumably for the Spirit to come (1:13–14). Fourth, they replaced Judas with Matthias as the twelfth apostle (1:15–26). Not that we are to think of these only as human activities. For it is Christ who commissioned them, ascended into heaven, promised them the Spirit they prayed for, and chose the new apostle. Dr Richard Longenecker goes further and sees these four factors as comprising what he calls ‘the constitutive elements of the Christian mission’, namely the mandate to witness, the ascended Lord who directs the mission from heaven, the centrality of the apostles in this task, and the coming of the Spirit to empower them. Only when these four elements were in place could the mission begin.
1. They receive their commission (1:6–8)
During the forty days in which the risen Lord ‘presented himself’ to the apostles and ‘gave many convincing proofs that he was alive’ (3), Luke indicates what he taught them. First, he spoke to them ‘about the kingdom of God’ (3), which had been the focus of his message during his public ministry and indeed (judging from the present participle legōn, ‘speaking’) continued to be after his resurrection. Second, he told them to wait for the gift or baptism of the Spirit, which had been promised by him, the Father and the Baptist, and which they would now receive ‘in a few days’ (4–5).
It appears, then, that Jesus’ two main topics of conversation between his resurrection and his ascension were the kingdom of God and the Spirit of God. It seems probable that he also related them to each other, for certainly the prophets had often associated them. When God establishes the kingdom of the Messiah, they said, he will pour out his Spirit; this generous effusion and universal enjoyment of the Spirit will be one of the major signs and blessings of his rule; and indeed the Spirit of God will make the rule of God a living and present reality to his people.
So then the question which the apostles put to Jesus when they met together (Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?, 6) was not altogether the non sequitur it sounds. For if the Spirit was about to come, as he had said, did this not imply that the kingdom was about to come too? The mistake they made was to misunderstand both the nature of the kingdom and the relation between the kingdom and the Spirit. Their question must have filled Jesus with dismay. Were they still so lacking in understanding? As Calvin commented, ‘there are as many errors in the question as words’. The verb, the noun and the adverb of their sentence all demonstrate confusion about the kingdom. For the verb restore shows that they were expecting a political and territorial kingdom; the noun Israel, that they were expecting a national kingdom; and the clause at this time, that they were expecting it to be established immediately. In his reply (7–8) Jesus corrected their mistaken ideas about the kingdom’s nature, extent and arrival.
a. The kingdom of God is spiritual in its character
In the English language, of course, a ‘kingdom’ is usually a territorial sphere which can be located on a map. But the kingdom of God is not a territorial concept. It does not – and cannot – figure on any map. Yet this is what the apostles were still imagining by confusing the kingdom of God with the kingdom of Israel. They were like the members of Israel’s righteous remnant whom Luke mentions in his Gospel as ‘waiting for the kingdom of God’ or ‘the consolation of Israel’, and like the Emmaus couple who ‘had hoped that he [Jesus] was the one who was going to redeem Israel’, but had become disillusioned because of the cross. The apostles’ hope, however, had evidently been rekindled by the resurrection. They were still dreaming of political dominion, of the re-establishment of the monarchy, of Israel’s liberation from the colonial yoke of Rome.
In his reply Jesus returned to the topic of the Holy Spirit. He spoke of the Spirit coming upon them and giving them power to be his witnesses (8). In Charles Williams’s notable words, he departed ‘scattering promises of power’. It is important to remember that his promise that they would receive power was part of his reply to their question about the kingdom. For the exercise of power is inherent in the concept of a kingdom. But power in God’s kingdom is different from power in human kingdoms. The reference to the Holy Spirit defines its nature. The kingdom of God is his rule set up in the lives of his people by the Holy Spirit. It is spread by witness, not by soldiers, through a gospel of peace, not a declaration of war, and by the work of the Spirit, not by force of arms, political intrigue or revolutionary violence. At the same time, in rejecting the politicizing of the kingdom, we must beware of the opposite extreme of super-spiritualizing it, as if God’s rule operates only in heaven and not on earth. The fact is that, although it must not be identified with any political ideology or programme, it has radical political and social implications. Kingdom values collide with secular values. And the citizens of God’s kingdom loyally deny to Caesar the supreme loyalty for which he hungers, but which they insist on giving to Jesus alone.
b. The kingdom of God is international in its membership
The apostles still cherished narrow, nationalistic aspirations. They asked Jesus if he was about to restore to Israel her national independence, which the Maccabees had regained in the second century bc for a brief intoxicating period, only to lose it again.
In his reply Jesus broadened their horizons. He promised that the Holy Spirit would empower them to be his witnesses. They would begin indeed in Jerusalem, the national capital in which he had been condemned and crucified, and which they were not to leave before the Spirit came. They would continue in the immediate surroundings of Judea. But then the Christian mission would radiate out from that centre, in accordance with the ancient prophecy that ‘the law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’, first to despised Samaria, and then far beyond Palestine to the Gentile nations, indeed to the ends of the earth. The thesis of Johannes Blauw in his book The Missionary Nature of the Church is that the Old Testament perspective was one of concern for the nations (God made them, and they will come and bow down to him), but not of mission to the nations (going out to win them). Even the Old Testament vision of the latter days is of a ‘pilgrimage of the nations’ to Mount Zion: ‘all nations will stream to it’. Only in the New Testament, Blauw adds, is a ‘centripetal missionary consciousness’ replaced by a ‘centrifugal missionary activity’, and ‘the great turning-point is the Resurrection, after which Jesus receives universal authority and gives his people a universal commission to go and disciple the nations’.
The risen Lord’s mandate to mission begins to be fulfilled in Acts. Indeed, as many commentators have pointed out, Acts 1:8 is a kind of ‘Table of Contents’ for the book. Chapters 1–7 describe events in Jerusalem; chapter 8 mentions the scattering of the disciples ‘throughout Judea and Samaria’ (8:1), and goes on to record the evangelization of a Samaritan city by Philip (8:5–24) and of ‘many Samaritan villages’ by the apostles Peter and John (8:25); while the conversion of Saul in chapter 9 leads on in the rest of the book to his missionary expeditions, and finally to his journey to Rome. For Christ’s kingdom, while not incompatible with patriotism, tolerates no narrow nationalisms. He rules over an international community in which race, nation, rank and gender are no barriers to fellowship. And when his kingdom is fulfilled at the end, the countless redeemed company will be seen to be drawn ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’.
c. The kingdom of God is gradual in its expansion
The apostles’ question included a specific reference to time: ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ (6). This had been the expectation of many during Jesus’ public ministry, as Luke makes clear in his Gospel. He records a parable which (he explains) Jesus told ‘because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once’. So the apostles asked if Jesus would do now after his resurrection what they had hoped he would do in his lifetime; and would he do it immediately?
The Lord’s reply was twofold. First, it is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority (7). ‘Times’ (chronoi) or ‘dates’ (kairoi) together make up God’s plan, ‘the times or critical moments of its history and the seasons or epochs of its orderly development’. The apostles’ question revealed either curiosity or impatience, or both. For the Father himself had fixed the times by his own authority, and the Son had confessed that he did not know the day and hour of his return (parousia). So they must restrain their curiosity and be willing to be left in ignorance. It is not only in relation to the fulfilment of prophecy but to many other undisclosed truths as well that Jesus still says to us ‘it is not for you to know’. The ‘secret things’ belong to God, and we should not pry into them; it is the ‘things revealed’ which belong to us, and we should be content with these.
Second, although they were not to know the times or dates, what they should know was that they would receive power so that, between the Spirit’s coming and the Son’s coming again, they were to be his witnesses in ever-widening circles. In fact, the whole interim period between Pentecost and the parousia (however long or short) is to be filled with the worldwide mission of the church in the power of the Spirit. Christ’s followers were both to announce what he had achieved at his first coming and to summon people to repent and believe in preparation for his second coming. They were to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (8) and ‘to the very end of the age’. This was a major theme of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin in his book The Household of God:
The Church is the pilgrim people of God. It is on the move – hastening to the ends of the earth to beseech all men to be reconciled to God, and hastening to the end of time to meet its Lord who will gather all into one . . . It cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological.
We have no freedom to stop until both ends have been reached. Indeed the two ends, Jesus taught, would coincide, since only when the gospel of the kingdom has been preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, only then ‘the end will come’.
So this was the content of the Lord’s teaching (as we know also from the Gospels) during the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension: when the Spirit came in power, the long-promised reign of God, which Jesus had himself inaugurated and proclaimed, would begin to spread. It would be spiritual in its character (transforming the lives and values of its citizens), international in its membership (including Gentiles as well as Jews) and gradual in its expansion (beginning at once in Jerusalem, and then growing until it reaches the end of both time and earthly space). This vision and commission must have given clear direction to the disciples’ prayers during their ten days of waiting for Pentecost. But before the Spirit could come, the Son must go. This is Luke’s next topic.
2. They see Jesus go into heaven (1:9–12)
At least three questions form in our minds as we read the story of the ‘ascension’ of Jesus – literary, historical and theological. First, do not Luke’s two accounts of the ascension contradict each other? Second, did the ascension of Jesus literally happen? Third, if it did, has it any permanent significance?
a. Did Luke contradict himself?
It is certainly appropriate, as we have already seen, that Luke should conclude his first volume and introduce his second with the same event, the ascension of Jesus, since it was both the end of his earthly ministry and the prelude to his continuing ministry from heaven through the Spirit. It is inherently unlikely, however, that the same author, telling the same story, should contradict himself. Yet this is what some scholars have asserted. Ernst Haenchen writes, for example: ‘Two Ascensions – one on Easter Day (Luke 24:51), the other forty days after (Acts 1:9) – are one too many.’ But in fact there are no substantial discrepancies, and it is possible to harmonize the two accounts without forcing the evidence.
It is true that in his Gospel, Luke makes no mention of the forty days. But it is unreasonable to suggest that he must therefore have forgotten them, or that he thought that the resurrection and the ascension occurred on the same day. No, in the Gospel he is simply giving a condensed account of the resurrection appearances, without feeling the need to note their different times and circumstances. He is undoubtedly recording one ascension, not two.
It is also true that each account includes details which the other omits, the Acts version being fuller than that in the Gospel. For example, at the end of the Gospel the ascending Christ raised his hands to bless them, and they worshipped him. Luke omits these actions at the beginning of his second volume, but adds there the cloud which hid him from their sight, and the appearance and message of the two men dressed in white, presumed to be angels. Yet these features of the story supplement, and do not contradict, each other.
It is true, third, that the Acts account seems to imply that Jesus ascended from the Mount of Olives (12), which is correctly said to be a Sabbath day’s walk from the city, about three-quarters of a mile (about 1.1 km), whereas the Gospel account says that Jesus ‘led them out to the vicinity of Bethany’, the village on the east slope of the mount, which is 2 or 3 miles further away from Jerusalem. Conzelmann declares that the latter ‘flatly contradicts the geographical reference in Acts 1:12’, and Haenchen assumes that Luke ‘did not possess any exact notion of the topography of Jerusalem’. But Luke’s Gospel statement may well be intentionally vague. He does not say that Jesus ascended from Bethany, but only that he led the apostles in that direction, heōs pros being quite properly translated ‘to the vicinity of Bethany’.
Having looked at what are said to be the three main discrepancies (regarding date, details and place), we may now note five points which the two accounts affirm in common. (a) Both say that the ascension of Jesus followed his commission to the apostles to be his witnesses. (b) Both say that it took place outside and east of Jerusalem, somewhere on the Mount of Olives. (c) Both say that Jesus ‘was taken up into heaven’, the passive voice indicating that the ascension, like the resurrection, was an act of the Father, who first raised him from the dead and then exalted him to heaven. As Chrysostom put it, ‘the royal chariot (was) sent for him’. (d) Both say that the apostles ‘returned to Jerusalem’ afterwards, the Gospel adding ‘with great joy’. (e) And both say that they then waited for the Spirit to come, in keeping with the Lord’s plain command and promise. Thus the evident agreements are greater than the apparent disagreements. The latter are sufficiently explained by supposing that Luke used his editorial freedom in selecting different details from the account or accounts he had heard, without wishing to repeat himself word for word.
b. Did the ascension really happen?
Many people nowadays, even within the church, deny the historicity of the ascension. Belief in a literal ascension would have been understandable in Luke’s day, they say, when people imagined heaven to be ‘up there’, so that Jesus had to be ‘taken up’ in order to get there. But that was a pre-scientific age; we have an altogether different understanding of the universe. Must we not therefore ‘demythologize’ the ascension? Then we can retain the truth that Jesus ‘went to the Father’, while at the same time stripping it of its ‘primitive mythological clothing’ which depicts it as a kind of ‘lift-off’, followed by an ascent into the sky. Besides, Luke is the only Gospel-writer who tells the story of the ascension. The others omit it. In fact the New Testament authors in general hardly distinguish between the resurrection and the ascension; they seem to regard them as the same event, or perhaps two aspects of the same event. Even William Neil, who is usually quite conservative in his conclusions, tells his readers (without argument) that Luke, knowing that ‘theological truth can often be best conveyed by imaginative word-pictures’, is not to be interpreted literally. ‘It would be a grave misunderstanding of Luke’s mind and purpose to regard his account of the Ascension of Christ as other than symbolic and poetic.’
A number of sound reasons can be given, however, why we should reject this attempt to discredit the ascension as a literal, historical event.
First, miracles do not need precedents to validate them. The classical argument of the eighteenth-century deists was that we can believe strange happenings outside our experience only if we can produce something just like them within our experience. This ‘principle of analogy’, if correct, would be enough in itself to disprove many of the biblical miracles, for we have no experience (for example) of somebody walking on water, multiplying loaves and fishes, rising from the dead or ascending into heaven. An ascension, in particular, would defy the law of gravity, which in our experience operates always and everywhere. The principle of analogy, however, has no relevance to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, since both were unique events associated only with him. We are not claiming that people frequently (or even occasionally) rise from the dead and ascend into heaven, but that both events have happened once. The fact that we can produce no analogies before or since confirms their truth, rather than undermining it.
Second, the ascension is everywhere assumed in the New Testament. Although Luke is the only evangelist who describes it (Mark 16:19 is not an authentic part of Mark’s Gospel, but a later addition to it), it is incorrect to say that it is otherwise unknown. John records the risen Jesus telling Mary Magdalene to stop clinging to him because he has not yet ascended to the Father. Peter speaks in his Pentecost sermon of Jesus’ having been ‘exalted to the right hand of God’ as something different from and subsequent to his resurrection (Acts 2:31ff.), and he confirms it in his first letter. Paul frequently writes of the exaltation of Jesus to the supreme place of honour and power, and distinguishes it from his resurrection. And in the epistle to the Hebrews the rising and the reigning of Jesus are kept separate.
Third, Luke tells the story of the ascension with simplicity. All the extravagances associated with the apocryphal Gospels are missing. There is no embroidery such as we find in legends. There is no evidence of poetry or symbolism. It reads like history, and as if Luke intended us to accept it as history.
Fourth, Luke emphasizes the presence of eyewitnesses, and repeatedly refers to what they saw with their own eyes: ‘he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going.’ The two angels then said to them, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus . . . will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. Five times in this extremely brief account it is stressed that the ascension took place visibly. Luke has not piled up these phrases for nothing. He has much to say in his two-volume work about the importance for the verification of the gospel of the apostolic eyewitnesses. And here he plainly includes the ascension of Jesus within the range of historical truths to which the eyewitnesses could (and did) testify. Indeed, when Judas is replaced, Peter will make John’s baptism and Jesus’ ascension the beginning and end of the public ministry to which the apostles must bear witness (22).
Fifth, there is no alternative explanation of the end of the resurrection appearances and of the final disappearance of Jesus from the earth. What happened to him, then, and why did his appearances stop? What was the origin of the tradition that they lasted for precisely forty days? In the absence of any other answer to these questions, we prefer the explanation for which there is evidence, namely that the forty-day period began with his resurrection and terminated with his ascension.
Sixth, the visible, historical ascension had a readily understandable purpose. Jesus had no need to take a journey in space, and it is silly of some critics to ridicule his ascension by representing him as the first to do so. No, in the transition from his earthly to his heavenly state, Jesus could perfectly well have vanished, as on other occasions, and ‘gone to the Father’ secretly and invisibly. The reason for a public and visible ascension is surely that he wanted them to know that he had gone for good. During the forty days he had kept appearing, disappearing and reappearing. But now this interim period was over. This time his departure was final. So they were not to wait around for his next resurrection appearance. Instead, they were to wait for somebody else, the Holy Spirit (4). For he would come only after Jesus had gone, and then they could get on with their mission in the power he would give them.
At all events, the manner of his going (a visible ascension) had its desired effect. The apostles returned to Jerusalem and waited for the Spirit to come.
c. What is the permanent value of the ascension story?
We have seen what the visible ascension did for the apostles; what can it do for us? If we were to give a thorough answer to this question, we would need to bring different strands of teaching together from all the New Testament authors, including the completed sacrifice and continuing intercession of our Great High Priest described in Hebrews, the glorification of the Son of Man taught by John, the cosmic lordship emphasized by Paul and the final triumph when his enemies will become his footstool, foretold by Psalm 110:1 and endorsed by those who quote it. But Luke is not concerned with these truths. In order to understand his primary interest as he tells the ascension story, we shall need to pay attention to those two men dressed in white (10) who stood beside them (the apostles) and spoke to them. Luke calls them ‘men’ because that is how they appeared, but their shining dress and authoritative tone indicate that they were angels. In his Gospel, Luke has recorded the ministry of angels at several crucial moments in his story. They announced and attended the birth of Jesus. According to some manuscripts an angel appeared in the garden of Gethsemane to strengthen him. And ‘two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning’, later identified as angels, proclaimed his resurrection to the women. So it was entirely appropriate that angels should now appear to interpret his ascension. They asked the apostles a searching question: Men of Galilee . . . why do you stand here looking into the sky? (11a). The expression ‘into the sky’ or ‘into heaven’ occurs four times in verses 10 and 11; its repetition, especially in the angels’ implied rebuke, emphasizes that the apostles were not to spend their time scanning the sky. Two reasons are given.
First, Jesus will come again. This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven (11b). The implication seems to be that they will not bring him back by gazing up into the sky. He has gone, and they must let him go; he will return in his own good time, and in the same way. We must attach full weight to this angelic assurance of the parousia or second coming of Christ. But we must also be cautious in our interpretation of houtos (this same Jesus) and houtōs (in the same way). We should not press these words into meaning that the parousia will be like a film of the ascension played backwards, or that he will return to exactly the same spot on the Mount of Olives and will be wearing the same clothes. It is only by letting Scripture interpret Scripture that we shall understand the similarities and dissimilarities between the ascension and the parousia. ‘This same Jesus’ certainly indicates that his coming will be personal, the Eternal Son still possessing his glorified human nature and body. And ‘in the same way’ indicates that his coming will also be visible and glorious. They had seen him go; they would see him return. Luke recorded Jesus as saying so himself: ‘they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’. The same cloud which had hidden him from their sight (9), which had previously enveloped him and the three close apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration, and which was the symbol of Yahweh’s glorious presence throughout the Old Testament, would be the chariot of his coming as it had been of his going.
Yet there will also be important differences between his going and his coming. Although his coming will be personal, it will not be private like his ascension. Only the eleven apostles saw him go, but when he comes ‘every eye will see him’. Instead of returning alone (as when he went), millions of holy ones – both human and angelic – will form his retinue. And in place of a localized coming (‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’), it will be ‘like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other’.
Second, the angels implied, the apostles must get on with their witness until Christ comes again, for that was their mandate. There was something fundamentally inconsistent about their gazing up into the sky when they had been commissioned to go to the ends of the earth. It was the earth not the sky which was to be their preoccupation. Their calling was to be witnesses not stargazers. The vision they were to cultivate was not upwards in nostalgia to the heaven which had received Jesus, but outwards in compassion to a lost world which needed him. It is the same for us. Curiosity about heaven and its occupants, speculation about prophecy and its fulfilment, and obsession with ‘times and dates’ – these distract us from our God-given mission. Christ will come personally, visibly, gloriously. Of that we have been assured. Other details can wait. Meanwhile, we have work to do in the power of the Spirit.
The remedy for unprofitable spiritual stargazing lies in a Christian theology of history, an understanding of the order of events in the divine programme. First, Jesus returned to heaven (ascension). Second, the Holy Spirit came (Pentecost). Third, the church goes out to witness (mission). Fourth, Jesus will come back (parousia). Whenever we forget one of these events, or put them in the wrong sequence, confusion takes control. We need especially to remember that between the ascension and the parousia, the disappearance and the reappearance of Jesus, there stretches a period of unknown length which is to be filled with the church’s worldwide, Spirit-empowered witness to him. We need to hear the implied message of the angels: ‘You have seen him go. You will see him come. But between that going and coming there must be another. The Spirit must come, and you must go – into the world for Christ.’
Looking back, I think we may say that the apostles committed two opposite errors, both of which had to be corrected. First, they were hoping for political power (the restoration of the kingdom to Israel). Second, they were gazing up into the sky (preoccupied with the heavenly Jesus). Both were false fantasies. The first is the error of the politicist, who dreams of establishing utopia on earth. The second is the error of the pietist, who dreams only of heavenly bliss. The first vision is too earthly, and the second too heavenly. Is it fanciful to see a parallel here between Luke’s Gospel and Acts? Just as at the beginning of the Gospel Jesus in the Judean desert turned away from false ends and means, so at the beginning of Acts the apostles before Pentecost had to turn away from both a false activism and a false pietism. And in their place, as the remedy for them, there was (and is) witness to Jesus in the power of the Spirit, with all that this implies of earthly responsibility and heavenly enabling.
3. They pray for the Spirit to come (1:13–14)
Their walk back to Jerusalem, being only the three-quarters of a mile (1 km) permitted on the Sabbath, will have taken them no more than a quarter of an hour. Luke then tells us what they did for the next ten days before Pentecost. In his Gospel he says ‘they stayed continually at the temple, praising God’, and in Acts that in the room where they were staying, ‘they all joined together constantly in prayer’ (14). It was a healthy combination: continuous praise in the temple, and continuous prayer in the home. Luke does not tell us whether the upstairs room was the ‘large room upstairs, all furnished’, in which Jesus had spent his last evening with the Twelve, or whether it was the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, in which later many members of the Jerusalem church gathered to pray (Acts 12:12), or some other room. What he does tell us is that their prayers had two characteristics. I will take them in the opposite order.
a. Their prayer was united
Who were these people who met to pray? Luke says that they were ‘a group numbering about a hundred and twenty’ (15). Professor Howard Marshall suggests that the reason why the number is mentioned is that ‘in Jewish law a minimum of 120 Jewish men was required to establish a community with its own council’; so the disciples were already numerous enough ‘to form a new community’. Others have detected symbolism in the number, since the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles make twelve an obvious symbol of the church, and 120 is 12 × 10, as the 144,000 of the book of Revelation is 12 × 12 × 1,000. Yet others suggest that the 120 must have been only a percentage of the total believing community, since on one occasion ‘more than five hundred’ had seen the risen Lord at the same time, although, to be sure, this may have been in Galilee. In any case, the 120 included the eleven surviving apostles. Luke lists them (13), as he has done in his Gospel. And the list is the same, with only minor variations. For example, the inner circle of four, who had been named in the Gospel as pairs of brothers, ‘Simon and Andrew, James and John’, are now Peter, John, James and Andrew, putting those who were to become the leading apostles first, and also separating the natural brothers as if to hint that a new brotherhood in Christ has replaced the old relationship (see verse 16, ‘Brothers and sisters . . .’). The next two pairs are also rearranged, although no reason is apparent. Instead of ‘Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas’, Luke writes Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew. The remaining apostles are the same, except of course that the traitor Judas is omitted.
In addition to the eleven apostles are mentioned the women (14), presumably meaning Mary Magdalene, Joanna (whose husband managed Herod’s household) and Susanna – the trio Luke has named in the Gospel as ‘helping to support them [Jesus and the Twelve] out of their own means’ – together perhaps with ‘Mary the mother of James’ and the others who found the tomb empty and to whom the risen Lord later revealed himself. Then, placed separately as occupying a position of particular honour, Luke adds Mary the mother of Jesus, whose unique role in the birth of Jesus he has described in the first two chapters of his Gospel, together with his brothers (14), who had not believed in him during his earlier ministry, but who now – perhaps because of the private resurrection appearance to one of them, James – are included among the believers.
All these (the apostles, the women, the mother and brothers of Jesus, and the rest who made the number up to 120) joined together constantly in prayer. ‘Together’ translates homothymadon, a favourite word of Luke’s, which he uses ten times and which occurs only once elsewhere in the New Testament. It could mean simply that the disciples met in the same place, or were doing the same thing, namely praying. But it later describes both united prayer (4:24) and a united decision (15:25), so that the ‘togetherness’ implied seems to go beyond mere assembly and activity to agreement about what they were praying for. They prayed ‘with one mind or purpose or impulse’ (BAGD).
b. Their prayer was persevering
The verb translated joined . . . constantly (proskartereō) means to be ‘busy’ or ‘persistent’ in all activity. Luke uses it later both of the new converts who ‘devoted themselves to’ the apostles’ teaching (2:42) and of the apostles who determined to give priority to prayer and preaching (6:4). Here he uses it of perseverance in prayer, as Paul does several times.
There can be little doubt that the grounds of this unity and perseverance in prayer were the command and promise of Jesus. He had promised to send them the Spirit soon (4, 5, 8). He had commanded them to wait for him to come and then to begin their witness. We learn, therefore, that God’s promises do not render prayer unnecessary. On the contrary, it is only his promises which give us the warrant to pray and the confidence that he will hear and answer.
4. They replace Judas with Matthias as an apostle (1:15–26)
Having recorded the Lord’s commission to witness, his ascension and the disciples’ persevering prayers, Luke draws our attention to only one further action before Pentecost (in those days is vague enough to date it at any point between Ascension and Pentecost), namely the appointment of another apostle in place of Judas. We have to consider the need for such an appointment (the defection and death of Judas), the warrant for it (the fulfilment of Scripture) and the choice which was made (Matthias).
a. The death of Judas (1:18–19)
Verses 18 and 19 do not appear to be part of Peter’s speech, for they interrupt the sequence of his thought. Moreover, as an Aramaic speaker addressing Aramaic speakers, Peter would not have needed to translate the word Akeldama (19). But Luke, writing for Gentile readers, would need to explain its meaning. So these two verses are best understood as an editorial comment in which Luke acquaints his readers with the circumstances of Judas’s death.
Luke is outspoken in calling Judas’s betrayal of Jesus an act of wickedness (adikia, 18). Yet some people express their sympathy for him because his role was predicted and therefore (it is thought) foreordained. But this is not so. Calvin himself, for all his emphasis on the sovereignty of God, wrote: ‘Judas may not be excused on the ground that what befell him was prophesied, since he fell away not through the compulsion of the prophecy but through the wickedness of his own heart.’
In the Gospels, only Matthew records what happened to Judas, and he and Luke appear to be drawing on independent traditions. But their accounts are not as different as some argue, and it is certainly not necessary to say with R. P. C. Hanson that ‘they cannot both be true’. Both say that Judas died a miserable death, that a field was bought with the money paid him (thirty silver coins) and that it was called ‘the Field of Blood’. The apparent discrepancies concern how he died, who bought the field and why it was called ‘Blood Field’.
First, the manner of Judas’s death. Matthew writes that he committed suicide: ‘he went away and hanged himself’. Luke writes that he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out (18b). Attempts to harmonize these statements go back at least to Augustine. It is perfectly possible to suppose that after he had hanged himself, his dead body either fell headlong (the usual meaning of prēnēs), assuming that the rope or tree branch broke, or ‘swelled up’ (following a different derivation of prēnēs, which BAGD declares ‘linguistically possible’), and in either case ruptured.
Second, there is the question who bought the field. Matthew says that Judas, filled with remorse, tried to return the money to the priests and (when they refused to accept it) threw it into the temple and left. He adds that later the priests picked up the money and with it bought the potter’s field. Luke, on the other hand, says that with the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field (18a). So did the priests purchase the field, or did Judas? It is reasonable to answer that both did, the priests entering into the transaction, but with money which belonged to Judas. For, as Edersheim wrote, ‘by a fiction of law the money was still considered to be Judas’, and to have been applied by him in the purchase of the well-known “potter’s field”’.
Third, why did the field purchased come to be known as ‘the Field of Blood’? Matthew’s answer is that it had been bought with ‘blood money’; Luke gives no explicit reason, but implies that it was because Judas’s blood had been spilled there. Evidently different traditions developed (as so often happens) as to how the field got its name, so that different people called it ‘Blood Field’ for different reasons.
It is fair to conclude that these independent accounts of Judas’s death are not incompatible, and to agree with J. A. Alexander: ‘there is scarcely an American or English jury that would scruple to receive these two accounts as perfectly consistent’.
b. The fulfilment of Scripture (1:15–17, 20)
The warrant for replacing Judas was Old Testament Scripture. This was Peter’s conviction, which he expressed to the believers: Brothers and sisters, the Scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit spoke long ago through David concerning Judas (16). We need to recall that, according to Luke, the risen Lord had both opened the Scriptures to his disciples and opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. As a result, since the resurrection they had begun to have a new grasp of how the Old Testament foretold the sufferings and glory, rejection and reign of the Messiah. And, stimulated by Jesus’ explanations, they will have searched the Scriptures for further light during the fifty days of waiting. We know that various lists of Old Testament ‘testimonies’ to the Messiah were later compiled and circulated. But the process will have begun immediately after the resurrection.
Peter goes on to quote from two psalms (69 and 109), the first explaining what had happened (Judas’s defection and death) and the second what they should do about it (replace him). Psalm 69 is applied to Jesus five times in the New Testament. In it an innocent sufferer describes how his enemies hate and insult him without cause (Ps. 69:4), and how he is consumed with zeal for God’s house (Ps. 69:9). These verses are both quoted in John’s Gospel, verse 4 by Jesus himself and verse 9 by his disciples, while Paul twice refers this psalm to Jesus. Towards its end (from Ps. 69:24) the psalmist utters a prayer that God’s judgment will fall on these wicked and unrepentant people. Peter individualizes this text and applies it to Judas on whom indeed God’s judgment had fallen: May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it (20a). Psalm 109 is similar. It concerns ‘wicked and deceitful’ people who hate, slander and attack the writer without justification. Then one particular person is singled out, perhaps the ringleader, and God’s judgment on him is requested (Ps. 109:8): May another take his place of leadership (20b). This verse too, on what Dr Longenecker calls ‘the commonly accepted exegetical principle of analogous subject’, Peter applies to Judas.
These two scriptures seemed to Peter and the believers adequate general guidance on the need to replace Judas. Perhaps there was an additional factor, which Luke mentions in his Gospel, namely that Jesus drew a parallel between the twelve apostles and the twelve tribes of Israel. If the early church was to be accepted as enjoying direct continuity with, indeed as being the fulfilment of, Old Testament Israel, the number of its founders must not be depleted. A few years later it was not deemed necessary to replace James, for he had not defected, but had been faithful unto death (12:1–2).
c. The choice of Matthias (1:21–26)
Peter’s proposal that a twelfth apostle be chosen to replace Judas (21–22) throws light on his understanding of apostleship, to which reference was made in the previous chapter.
First, the apostolic ministry (25, this apostolic ministry) was to be a witness with us of his resurrection (22b). Jesus’ resurrection was early recognized as the divine vindication of both his person and his work, and Luke describes how with great power ‘the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus’ (Acts 4:33; cf. 13:30–31).
Second, the apostolic qualification was therefore to have been a witness of the resurrection to which they were called to bear witness (e.g. 2:32; 3:15; 10:40–42). It was essential to have seen the risen Lord, which is why Paul was later added to the apostolic band. But Judas’s replacement as a member of the foundation Twelve, whose responsibility was to safeguard the true tradition about Jesus, needed a fuller qualification than this. He must, Peter explained, have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us (21–22; cf. 10:39; 13:31). This is why I cannot agree with Campbell Morgan who (following others) wrote:
The election of Matthias was wrong . . . He was a good man, but the wrong man for this position . . . I am not prepared to omit Paul from the twelve, believing that he was God’s man for the filling of the gap.
But Luke gives no hint at all that a mistake was made, in spite of the fact that Paul was obviously his hero. Besides, Paul did not have the fuller qualification which Peter laid down.
Third, the apostolic appointment was by the Lord Jesus himself. It had been he who chose the original Twelve. So he must choose Judas’s replacement. It is true that the 120 believers were told to do the choosing (21). But what they did was to sift possible candidates and from them nominate two, namely Joseph (whose other name was Barsabbas in Hebrew and Justus in Latin) and Matthias. We know nothing about either of them, although Eusebius says that both were members of the Seventy. Then they prayed to Jesus as Lord, calling him (literally) everybody’s ‘heart-knower’, kardiagnōstēs, a word Luke later uses of God, and asked him to show them which of the two he had already chosen (24). Then they cast lots (26), a method of discerning God’s will which was endorsed in the Old Testament, but which does not appear to have been used after the Spirit had come. Matthias was chosen; so he was added to the eleven apostles.
It is worth noting the cluster of factors which contributed to the discovery of God’s will in this matter. First came the general leading of Scripture that a replacement should be made (16–21). Next, they used their common sense that if Judas’s substitute was to have the same apostolic ministry he must also have the same qualifications, including an eyewitness experience of Jesus and a personal appointment by him. This sound deductive reasoning led to the nomination of Joseph and Matthias. Third, they prayed. For though Jesus had gone, he was still accessible to them by prayer and was recognized as having a knowledge of hearts which they lacked. Finally, they drew lots, by which they trusted Jesus to make his choice known. Leaving aside this fourth factor, because the Spirit has now been given us, the remaining three (Scripture, common sense and prayer) constitute a wholesome combination through which God may be trusted to guide us today.
The stage is now set for the Day of Pentecost. The apostles have received Christ’s commission and seen his ascension. The apostolic team is complete again, ready to be his chosen witnesses. Only one thing is missing: the Spirit has not yet come. Though the place left vacant by Judas has been filled by Matthias, the place left vacant by Jesus has not yet been filled by the Spirit. So we leave Luke’s first chapter of Acts with the 120 waiting in Jerusalem, persevering in prayer with one heart and mind, poised ready to fulfil Christ’s command just as soon as he has fulfilled his promise.